So we really wanted to go to Cuba. Once upon a time, in an administration that was a little less orange than the one we have at present, it appeared that restrictions on travel between the States and our neighbor to the south were relaxing. In fact, an acquaintance of ours had gone on a photography trip to Cuba and brought back many beautiful images.
So we did the research. If we were to go, we still had to do it as part of a “cultural exchange” program approved by the State Department. We looked at all the options, what they cost, what they would let us do, and devised a complicated spreadsheet to “score” each tour package and pick the one we wanted.
The result: they were all too expensive, and none would give us the freedom to see what we wanted to see. So, with only a few months left to make a decision about where we would travel that year, we got on Groupon.com to see what was available. It came down to two options: a trip through Italy in which a travel agency would arrange our hotels, rental car, and then set us loose; or a packaged tour through Morocco where everything was planned in advance and all we had to do was show up.
We’ve always been leery of packaged tours – the lack of freedom, being herded like sheep – having experienced them in a way on the cruises we’d taken. However, after the decision fatigue of planning and discarding our vacation to Cuba, coupled with the uncertainty of driving on our own in a foreign country, we opted for the Morocco package. To set the timeline straight, we purchased our tour of Morocco less than two hours after abandoning our plans to see Cuba.
The Package
The trip we booked was the two-week Kaleidoscope of Morocco from Gate One Travel. The itinerary doesn’t appear to have changed in the years since we went (September 2015), and includes a bus, an English-speaking guide, many of your meals, and all of your hotel reservations for six cities in Morocco: Rabat, Fez, Erfoud, Ouarzazate, Marrakesh, and Casablanca. Along the way there are many side-trips and optional tours, as well as a free day here or there to wander around at will.
Despite my initial reluctance to go back to Africa, it was the chance to ride a camel into the Sahara that sold me.
When you buy a trip from Groupon, there is usually a list of designated departure cities from which they will fly you so the tour group can converge at the same place and time. We were living in Birmingham, Alabama, which is never on the list of departure cities. To our irritation, nearby Atlanta wasn’t one either, but the folks at Gate One were accommodating. They could book us a flight from Atlanta to Casablanca, but we would have to leave the States and land in Morocco a day before everyone else. We would be on our own to arrange lodging for that first night and meet up with the tour at the Casablanca airport on the following day.
That was no problem for us. We booked a stay at the Ibis Hotel (which by sheer coincidence would be where Gate One would put us on our last night in-country). After our arrival, we had an evening and a morning in Casablanca to ourselves.
Casablanca
Despite lending its name to one of the greatest Hollywood classics of all time, Casablanca didn’t feature prominently on the tour’s itinerary. There’s a reason for that: there’s not much to see. Casablanca is the economic capitol of Morocco, and as such it’s a working city. From a tourist standpoint, there’s nothing there – with one glaring exception. And I’m not talking about the cheesy “Rick’s Café” that someone established to cash in on Humphrey Bogart.
No, the reason you have to visit Casablanca is to see the Hassan II Mosque. Completed in 1993 after only seven years of intense construction, the Hassan II is the largest mosque in Africa and the fifth largest in the world. Compare that to the Sagrada Família in Barcelona that’s been under construction since 1882 and won’t be finished until (supposedly) 2026. The more striking comparison in my mind is to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which we’d visited three years earlier. Both spaces are more vast than your brain wants to comprehend, but the Hassan II Mosque just seems so much classier. And it’s far, far less crowded.
Also important to note: the Hassan II Mosque is the only mosque in Morocco which non-Muslims are allowed to enter and tour. All others must be viewed solely from the outside.
After enjoying a morning at the mosque, Lea and I went back to the airport to hook up with our tour group. This was actually nerve-wracking since the guy Gate One sent to pick people up was only watching for airplane arrivals. Even though I walked by him no less than five times, not once did he have his “Gate One” sign where I could see it. We called the Gate One office, but English is not a good “second language” in Morocco. If you don’t speak Arabic or Amazigh, then you’d better brush up on your French.
After hours of desperate searching we finally located our dude (who thankfully wouldn’t be our guide for the rest of the trip). He piled us in a van with some fellow travelers that took us to our first official hotel in the neighboring city of Rabat.
Rabat
Now this was our kind of town. I’d never heard of Rabat before, but here there was plenty to do. Our stay included free time to wander and a tour to see the sights with our group, led by our guide Hamdan. Hamdan was the best – always a smile on his face, always free for a question or two, and a master at corralling a mob of English-speakers with shouts of “Yallah, yallah!” (Come on, hurry up!)
Rabat is the political capitol of Morocco, so our city tour began with a drive-by of the Royal Palace, where we got to watch guards lounge around the gate. After that, on the edge of town, we visited the impressive ruins of the city of Chellah. Chellah has several distinct sections, having been inhabited at various times by the Phoenecians, Romans, Amazigh Christians, and Muslim Arabs. As anyone who read my articles on Peru may remember, I’m a sucker for ruins. Ancient sites like Chellah make me drool.
Back in the city, we visited the Oudaya Kasbah, an ancient fortified keep that is still inhabited, the home of many families and businesses (including one fantastic candy shop). In the Kasbah, it was possible to get the feel of Moroccan daily life. The café overlooks a sheer cliff down to the where the Bou Regreg river empties into the Atlantic. Down there on the muddy beach were many people enjoying the afternoon and playing in the waves.
We wrapped up the morning with a visit to the Hassan Tower and the mausoleum of Mohammed V, both impressive feats of Arab architecture and design. After that, we found our own way to a currency museum and a pair of modern art museums that were some of the most impressive we’ve come across anywhere.
On the Road to Fez
After Rabat came our first long day on the bus. Unlike on our later trek through South America, we didn’t have to worry about transporting our luggage or booking tickets. In fact, we didn’t have to think at all. That even came down to choosing our seats.
This we didn’t expect: on the tour we had assigned seats on the bus, and those assigned seats changed every day. I can see the logic behind it. With variable assigned seating, no one got to hog the best view or throw a fit about what their preference was. Everyone got to sit up front, and everyone got to sit in back. It did, however, play into the feeling that tourists on a package tour are essentially herded like sheep and treated somewhat like infants. Having spent most of my adult life in customer service I know damn well that adults can act like infants and that you need to be prepared to manage that.
Anyway, on the road to Fez we got to see the “holy city” of Moulay Idriss from afar and get up close to the ruins of the Roman city of Volubilis. Once again, I was in Ancient Ruin Heaven. Volubilis was a Roman city that is now a UNESCO world heritage site. Most of the buildings were destroyed by the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, but much of the site has now been uncovered, including much fine Roman tile work.
Fez
Once we reached Fez, we got a special treat. After our group had settled into our hotel, we were all taken out to dinner – not at a restaurant but with a local family who’d prepared us a grand Moroccan feast. This is the kind of experience that we’d never have been able to arrange on our own unless we’d had contacts or friends-of-friends in town. We sampled many dishes and the family members mingled with the tourists, providing a generous and wonderful welcome to the city.
On our next day in Fez, Lea and I broke from the itinerary. We’d taken a look at the plan for the day and it looked like a lot of running around and shopping. We’re not recreational shoppers and there were other sights that we wanted to enjoy. Hamdan was alright with this and arranged a private tour (which we paid for ourselves) to take us where we wanted to go.
It sort of worked out like that. Our personal tour guide still aimed us at places where we were expected to at least consider making purchases, and at two of them we actually did. However, instead of running around with the tour group from one shop to the next, we were able to enjoy a different sample of the city.
We started with a visit to the Jewish quarter, visiting a synagogue and the local Jewish cemetery. A word here on religion: Morocco is a Muslim country, but it’s an inclusive, more liberal form of Islam – about as far as you can imagine from what Saudi Arabia must be like (though we would see more restrictive forms of Islam once we got into the countryside).
After seeing the Jewish district and the gates of the city, we visited a pottery and ceramics collective on the outskirts of town. We got to watch artisans hand-make the pottery, chip out tile patterns, and hand-paint the results. The entire process was spectacular, as were the items they crafted. We were able to escape while only buying a serving tray, though if we won the lottery I can imagine decorating a house with this stuff.
From there we went down into the maze of narrow alleys that is the heart of Fez. This city has been a crossroads of commerce going back to the days of caravans across the Sahara. Along with trade goods, that commerce also brought ideas. It is home to the oldest known university in the world, the University of Al-Karaouine. According to our guide, though the story may be apocryphal, it was here that Pope Sylvester II first encountered the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and brought it back for use in Europe. (It’s more likely that books from the university in Fez made it to Barcelona, and it was there that the future pope learned Arabic numerals. Either way, it changed the course of history.)
Navigating the maze of Fez, our guide took us through streets of artisans and craftsmen. In the courtyard of the coppersmiths we crossed paths with our official tour group and were glad not to be part of that herd for the day. In one enormous house we got to see traditional rug makers at work, after which we were presented a series of hand-woven rugs in a variety styles. And yes, they were happy to take credit cards and handle shipping. Oh, we were tempted.
An unmissable stop is Fez’s famous leatherworks. From on high, you can watch workmen dying leather in a vast morass of chemical vats. The smell is overwhelming, and that’s from far above. I can only imagine that the poor guys who work there have had their sinuses completely burned out by now.
The last stop we requested was on a hill above the city and off the tourist trail: the Musee des Armes. This large, practically deserted museum had room after room full of weapons and armor dating from modern times and going back thousands of years. Admission is cheap and there’s a pre-recorded English language audio tour, hilariously narrated by someone who didn’t speak English and was obviously trying to pronounce the words of the script phonetically.
Our private tour didn’t hit every point on our list and still pushed us toward more shopping than we’d have liked, but the lesson to take away is that even on a packaged tour you can break out on your own and see the sights you’d like to see. Rabat and Fez in particular are cities that I’d highly recommend as travel destinations. I’d feel perfectly happy to go there again, if there wasn’t so much of the world left to see!
Next, in Part 2: Crossing the Atlas Mountains into the Sahara!